


we are made of stardust

by TheTinyTortoise



Category: His Dark Materials - Philip Pullman, Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Daemons, Gen
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2018-03-10
Updated: 2019-02-11
Packaged: 2019-03-29 06:58:34
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 4
Words: 1,342
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13921779
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TheTinyTortoise/pseuds/TheTinyTortoise
Summary: Snippets about the Paladins and their souls.





	1. you’re ripped at every edge (but you’re a masterpiece)

When he wakes up in the Garrison’s custody, she’s with him again, and that feels more like coming home than seeing other humans again does. She snarls at the other daemons trying to pen her in and nuzzles at his Galra hand with a cold wet nose. He doesn’t notice how the other daemons shrink from her then. She’s not the same Kimiko they remember.

She comes back different, different in a way he feels underneath his facade of normal. He can hide it, but it’s impossible for her. Before, she’d been an enormous white dog, fluffy and friendly. Now, she seems smaller, wilder, always slinking around with her muscles tensed to leap and her lips ready to curl back in a snarl. She’s sharper, meaner. She’s not who he remembers.

Kimiko goes on the expedition as a dog…..and comes back as a wolf.

Lance and Hunk and Pidge didn’t know her before, so they can’t tell the difference. Keith and Manami did, but they’ve always idolized them far too much to observe objectively. They’re just happy to have Shiro and Kimiko back; they don’t care to notice the differences. “Can’t you tell?” Shiro wants to scream. “Can’t you see we’re different?”

At night, curled up together in bed, he and Kimiko will whisper to each other, telling each other what they can remember of their time apart. “Do you miss the way I used to be?” Kimiko always asks, ears pinned back against her head.

Shiro’s answer is always “No.” He lost her once. He never wants to lose her again. He’ll take the Kimiko he has now gladly, even if she’s just as broken as he is. _Especially_ because she’s just as broken as he is.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shiro’s daemon, Kimiko, is half wolf, half Great Pyrenees. Think huge, white, and fluffy. Personally, I think that she was always a wolf dog and her wolf traits only started appearing after she and Shiro were captured, but you can interpret it however you want.   
> She looks something like this, just a bit more wolfish: http://2.bp.blogspot.com/-7Tv_1_6N5Tg/TXgfLojlWkI/AAAAAAAAF1o/QoSPTQlJPZ8/s320/great%2Bpyrenees%2B5.jpg
> 
> Keith’s daemon is named Manami. We’ll learn more about her in later chapters....


	2. gonna give all my secrets away

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Manami isn’t a Shiba Inu, or even a dog at all, and no one can ever know.

Manami looks like a black and tan Shiba Inu. That’s what most people think she is. Keith knows better, though, because black and tan Shiba Inus don’t have claws. Or forked tongues. Or more than one row of teeth.

Manami isn’t a Shiba Inu, or even a dog at all, and no one can ever know.

Humans are supposed to have human daemons. There are alien species with daemons, sure, but their daemons are species from their own planets. Having an alien daemon means that there’s something really wrong with you. They’d be chucked into a psychiatric hospital at the very least if anyone ever found out. At worst, they’d be sent away for testing.

At the Garrison, having a physical examination performed on you and your daemon is mandatory. It’s nothing invasive, nothing to violate the taboo, but they hadn’t been able to risk it. They couldn’t chance being caught.

Refusing the examination is grounds for expulsion.

The Red Lion doesn’t seem to care that there’s something wrong with them, and the team doesn’t seem to notice. Even Allura, who seems to know everything, says nothing. For once, Keith thinks that this might actually work out.

(After they find out about the whole half-Galra thing, Manami’s shape makes a whole lot more sense.)

(Also, what do you mean, she has wings?)

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Manami looks something like this, sans claws and fangs and wings: https://myfirstshiba.com/wp-content/uploads/2016/11/AdobeStock_99867658_retouced-copy.jpg


	3. we’re making loud music (you and i)

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> You see, Lance learns early on that if you want to be heard, you’ve got to yell.

On their very first day ever at the Garrison, one of the instructors glares at Lance and groans “Jesus Christ, kid, do you ever shut up?”

Lance grins, and Esmeriende crows, because she’s a jerk like that. “Nope,” they say in perfect unison, neatly earning themselves their very first detention.

You see, Lance learns early on that if you want to be heard, you’ve got to yell. In a household overflowing with Mcclains, there’s no such thing as an inside voice. Or, well, there is-but it’s several decibels louder than the inside voice everyone else uses. Whispering just isn’t a thing you do in the Mcclain household.

Esmeriende has never had a problem with this. She’s always liked choosing flashy shapes. When Lance was a kid, she went through phases of the loudest, most obnoxious shapes she could possibly think of, driving Mamá to near distraction. Even Lance had been a little relieved when she finally settled and couldn’t howl as a howler monkey or screech as a macaw anymore. Though, of course, her settled form is hardly much better…..especially at dawn.

Abuela’s eyebrows shoot towards the sky when she sees Esmeriende’s shape for the first time, but Mamá is pleased, so Lance doesn’t even notice. Mamá’s cougar daemon, Caillao, swipes his tongue approvingly over Esmeriende’s feathers and purrs like the engine of a big diesel truck. Lance and Esmeriende have never felt so proud. 

“Díos,” Abuela mumbles, rolling her eyes skyward. “Now we’ll never get any peace and quiet around here.”

When Lance goes off to school, he knows right away that he and Hunk are going to be a good match when he sees Hunk’s Ayita. Ayita makes hardly any noise at all, and Esmeriende never shuts up. They’re a match made in best friend Heaven. Still, though, he can never help feeling that they’re making too much noise. Are they being too loud? Will they drive Hunk away by accident?

When the team gets together, it’s almost like being home again. There’s a lot of them, and it gets loud. It’s a glorious sort of chaos, and they love it. But when they need a bit of quiet, too….Shiro will raise his voice, and Kimiko will bark, and the clamor will die down right away.

Lance and Esmeriende will never have to worry about going unheard ever again. And, honestly….it’s kind of nice.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Esmeriende is a Serama rooster. She’s female but has a male shape (which you can bet Abuela wasn’t too happy about). She looks something like this: https://www.omlet.com.au/images/originals/serama_chickens_my_serama_rooster__c77e087cc12a08b670aa3caf.jpg


	4. thanks for making me a fighter

When Hunk is a kid, some of his classmates make the mistake of teasing him at recess. All he remembers is staring down at the ground, fighting back the tears welling up in his eyes. Ayita is leaning up against his leg, trembling with embarrassment. Or at least what Hunk assumes to be embarrassment.

His assumption is to be proved completely and totally wrong.

The next thing he knows, Ayita is leaping forward, and the other kids are scattering with shrieks of surprise. The daemon of the meanest kid of the bunch doesn’t run away quite fast enough, and Ayita flings herself at him in a new, compact shape that Hunk has never seen her wear before. She sits herself down right on the other daemon’s chest and begins snapping in his face with surprisingly sharp white teeth.

The teachers come running, summoned by the screams of their charges, and their daemons manage to pry Ayita off of the bully’s daemon-though, Hunk notes, not before she smacks the daemon of the teacher who had given them an unfair homework grade the year before right in the face with one enormous paw. 

They’re packed off to the office, and their parents are called. While they’re waiting, Hunk leans over to Ayita and hisses “What was that?”

She looks at him, unrepentant. “They deserved it,” she says. “They were never going to stop being mean to us. So I made them stop.”

“But now they’re going to hate us,” Hunk whispers.

Ayita shrugs. “We’ll find better friends.”

They lapse into silence, Hunk imagining with horror what the rest of the school year will be like and Ayita basking in her victory. Only when the principal pokes his head in the room and announces that their parents are there does Hunk realize that Ayita hasn’t changed since she first went berserk.

“You like this shape, don’t you,” he says, stomach sinking.

She nods. “It’s us.”

“Uh, I’m pretty sure it’s just you,” Hunk shoots back.

She butts at his calf with her nose. She’s surprisingly strong, enough to knock him off balance a little. “Hunk, it’s us.”

He doesn’t believe her then. But he will. In a few years, he’ll be fighting off aliens trying to conquer the galaxy, piloting a mechanical lion from space, and finding the strength not to kill Keith and Lance when they start bickering yet again. He’ll realize that her strength is his strength, too. They’re a team. 

But for now, he submits to a dressing down from the principal and pretends that Ayita has taken a gentler form instead

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Ayita is a badger and she looks something like this: https://www.nwemail.co.uk/resources/images/8695960/?type=responsive-gallery-fullscreen


End file.
